


Faster Than a Streak ‘O

by Byrcca



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Golden Oldies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:16:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21941023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byrcca/pseuds/Byrcca
Summary: A little Christmas story for Tom and B’Elanna. My first.
Relationships: Tom Paris/B'Elanna Torres
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	Faster Than a Streak ‘O

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Little Red Wagon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16837645) by [Byrcca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byrcca/pseuds/Byrcca). 



> I present to you the original Little Red Wagon, lost, then found by Lady Arreya.
> 
> As I type this, I’ve reread two paragraphs, so I have no idea how well it will line up with the rewrite. And, obviously, when I wrote this I didn’t consider that because of Tom’s Grease Monkey programme he would likely know how to use tools. Meh. As always, just go with it! 
> 
> Originally posted January 2004 which is odd for a Christmas story.

Disclaimer: You know the drill. Tom, B’Elanna and Miral belong to people who never learned to appreciate them. LL belongs to my babe, Barbara Watson. She was inspired. :)

~*~*~*~*~

“B’Elanna?”

B’Elanna smiled, and tucked a stray curl behind a tiny ear. She shifted in the chair, careful not to wake the sleeping infant. He was still suckling lazily at the breast, one chubby fist holding her robe in a tight grip. 

Light spilled through the doorway from the adjoining living room and pooled on the carpet. Tom’s voice carried softly to her ears. 

“Honey?”

Her smile turned into a full-blown grin.

His silhouette appeared in the bedroom doorway. He held a long piece of metal in one hand, and a PADD in the other. “What’s a,” he consulted the PADD, “‘three-eighths inch Phillips head’?” Exasperation tinged his voice.

“You know,” B’Elanna said softly, “you could just replicate it.”

Tom scowled, and leaned the tube of metal against the wall. “But then it wouldn’t be a genuine 1936 Radio Flyer Streak-O-Lite wagon.”

“Is it 1936?”

“No.” Tom’s denial was a drawn-out sigh.

“Is it 2336?”

“B’Elanna. Help me. It’s almost,” he checked the chronometer on the bedside table, “two thirty-six in the morning.”

“Is it? I thought two am feedings were your job, daddy.” 

He glanced at the baby, and reached out to stroke his cheek. “You can’t do the job if you don’t have the right equipment,” he hinted. “What’s a Phillips head?”

“Didn’t you ever use a screwdriver on that Camaro of yours?”

“Noooo...” 

He sighed, and she felt her resolve softening. But late as the hour was, she knew he was still good for one more round. Her mouth twitched. Her eyebrow rose. “Streak-O-Lite?”

He bent to crouch on the floor by her chair. One hand reached out and cupped the baby’s leg, and he drew his index finger over a chubby knee. “It was the first specialty wagon ever built. They modeled it after the Zephyr land train. It had full metal suspension, working headlights, dials and switches—”

“A Captain Proton wagon.”

“It’s red. She’ll love it.”

“She’s three! She’s too young for it. She’ll break her neck.”

“She’s tall for her age. And her coordination is better than a kid twice her age. And I replicated the helmet and elbow pads.” 

“Were the goggles really necessary?”

“We live planet-side now. They’ll keep the bugs out of her eyes.”

“You just want your helmets to match. I suppose you replicated her a jacket, too?” 

The pleading in Tom’s eyes finally swayed her. “Phillips head?” 

“Three-eighths inch,” Tom verified. He smiled warmly at her. His expression changed to one of triumph as he rose to his feet.

The devil made her do it. “What happened to ‘I’m the daddy, I don’t need help.’”

His brow wrinkled as a look of consternation crossed his face. “You’re the engineer,” he pointed out. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

“Probably not,” she agreed. She handed him the baby in exchange for the PADD.

“I made it up to you. I proposed.”

“Mmmm.” Her voice trailed off as she studied the instructions on the PADD. There were several pages of script littered with old-fashioned 2-D schematics, many enlarged and situated inside a circle with a stylized arrow pointing toward a particular area of the original drawing. Interesting. She scrolled up, engineer’s curiosity piqued. 

At first it just looked like a jumble of lines and patterns, but her brain quickly transformed the two-dimensional diagrams into a three-dimensional wagon. She picked up the long piece of metal that Tom had brought with him into the room, and scrolled back to the first ‘page’ of the instruction ‘booklet’. Her mouth twitched. 

Tom was back in record time, minus the baby. He rubbed his hands together and made a grab for the PADD. B’Elanna dodged. 

“Hand me one of the wheels,” she murmured.

“Um, B’Elanna? That’s the handle. You put the... bracket-thing through the hole there, and, um…” His voice trailed to silence when he saw that she wasn’t listening. Her brow was drawn into a little ‘vee’ of concentration, and she glanced up from the PADD to search the part-strewn living room. 

“We should have ten half-inch bolts and wing nuts.” She looked at him expectantly. 

Tom twirled in a half-circle, and finally located them on the arm of the sofa. He picked up a tray containing fifty-odd pieces of hardware of various sizes and shapes, and thrust it at her. “They’re in here. Somewhere.” The tray rattled. 

B’Elanna took it from him with a tight smile and settled cross-legged on the floor. She laid the long piece of black metal over her lap, and reached for a shorter cross bar. “It’s really very simple,” she said. “You don’t even need the instructions. Slide this through here, and tighten the nut. Do the same for the other end. Hand me that wheel?”

“But, you see, the handle.” Well, damn. “Um, shouldn’t that attach that directly to the wagon?”

“No,” she answered simply. 

He reached for the wheel and held it possessively. “You know, honey, all I really wanted to know was what a Phillips head screwdriver was, and—”

“I can use my hyperspanner.”

“But, B’Elanna! That would be cheating!”

“Tom, you replicated the parts. It’s not like you built a forge and made the moulds yourself.”

“But, I’m the daddy,” Tom said forlornly.

She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “Tom. Repeat after me: I am not the engineer, I will not attempt to build the wagon.” Her gaze dropped back to the wagon’s undercarriage.

“Here,” he said, handing her the wheel. She smiled absently, and reached for another bolt. He watched her work, assembling the pieces as if she’d done it a million times. Every few minutes he’d hand her a part, or a bolt, and he’d deliberately brush his fingers over her warm skin. Her eyes never left her work.

“Help me set it upright,” she said finally. 

He took hold of the braces and swung the undercarriage around. The sucker was heavy! B’Elanna laid the wagon bed on top, and it bounced on the suspension. Tom grinned. 

“Have you ever noticed that ancient engineering was all about triangles?” she asked. “I need another screw.”

“Three-eighths inch?”

“Um hum.” Her attention was already back on the wagon. Her chin came up again. “Light kit?”

“Here.” Tom hunkered down at the front of the wagon and threaded the wires through the tiny holes. B’Elanna pulled them through the back of the cover plate, and attached them to the main switch. 

“Do you want to tighten the last dial, Captain Proton?” she asked with a grin. 

“Sure,” he said, an answering glint in his eye. “Now the handle?”

“Now the handle. Here, rock it back.”

Tom stood, and set the wagon on its hind wheels while B’Elanna attached the handle to two slim metal rods. He’d thought they were part of the brake system that she’d insisted they add. At least he’d talked her out of the seat restraints.

She nodded her head, and Tom set the wagon back down on its wheels. She placed the helmet inside the wagon with a flourish. “Voilà!” B’Elanna said. Her mouth was split in a wide grin. “That was fun.”

“Not quite,” Tom said. Her crossed to the replicator and punched in a code he’d come to memorize. A large red bow appeared, complete with wide, meter long ribbons. He walked back to wagon and tied the bow to the handle. “Now it’s done,” he said. 

B’Elanna’s arms crept around his waist, and she leaned her cheek against his shoulder. “She’ll love it,” she confirmed. “Just promise me you won’t let her go downhill.”

“I’ll be with her, she’ll be fine.”

“Mmmm. Captain Proton and his trusty sidekick, Space Cadet Miral. Defenders of the universe.”

He turned and wrapped her in a warm hug. “Don’t forget their trusty mechanic, L’Anna L’Amour. She makes Captain Proton’s spaceship go.” He waggled his eyebrows, and she punched him in the gut. 

“I’ll make your little red wagon go, Proton.”

“Is that a promise, L’Anna?”

She grinned and pulled away. “We should get to bed. It’s almost three and you know Miral will be up at six.”

“I’ll be there in a sec,” Tom said. “I still have to fill her stocking.”

“I did it this afternoon.” She reached into a storage closet and took out a sparkly purple Christmas stocking. It had white down around the top that flounced as she hung it on the fireplace mantle. She turned back to her husband and untied her robe. “Wanna come fill my stocking, Captain?”

“Have you been a good girl? What do you want me to put in it?” he grinned.

B’Elanna caught his hand and tugged him through the bedroom doorway. “Well, every good little engineer needs a Phillips head screwdriver. Apparently.”

“Three-eighths inch?” Tom guessed.

“I was hoping for something a little bigger.” 

B’Elanna squealed as he lunged for her and tossed her onto the bed. The room was dark except for the glow of the Christmas tree lights spilling in through the open doorway, and the full moon shining in through the window. The door slid shut, but Captain Proton didn’t mind. His rocket pack was fully charged, and he’d never had a problem working by moonlight. 

~*~*~*~*~

the end.

Original End Note: If there are any pesky ‘that/which’ mistakes in the story, I trust you’ll let me know. :D And yes, ‘suckling’ is grammatically correct. It’s not just an adjective, it’s a verb! Though... if you want to think of Tom’s son as a suckling pig (piglet), don’t let me stop you! *snort!*


End file.
